


To Care for Those Who Have Been Cast Aside

by coldrottingtrees



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Babies, Babysitting, M/M, Orphans, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 23:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldrottingtrees/pseuds/coldrottingtrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the Dragon Age Kink Meme.</p><p>Prompt: "Anders and a baby elf!</p><p>Hawke and the crew rescue a very young elf child from Tevinter slavers. Anders is good with children from his years at the Circle and his clinic, so it's decided he'll watch the elfling until Hawke can find him a new home.</p><p>Fenris wasn't in the party that rescued the child. He finds out that the mage has him and freaks the fuck out, believing that Anders is going to go all Magister and enslave him, because that's what mages do to helpless little elflings, right?</p><p>Would LOVE for this to end in Fenders."</p><p>http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/8469.html?thread=30777365#t30777365</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Care for Those Who Have Been Cast Aside

  
“Oh,” Merrill squeaked in surprise.  


“You okay over there?” Hawke said from the other side of the room, where he and Varric were rummaging through dead slavers’ pockets. 

“I found a baby,” she answered, peering behind a barrel. “Hello there,” she said softly. “Are you alright? Anders, come over, help me make sure the little one here is alright.”

All three men came over, and the little elf child hiding behind the barrel shrank even further against the wall. 

“It’s alright, little one, we’re not going to hurt you,” Merrill crooned gently. She extended her hands toward the elfling. “We’ve made the nasty slavers go away now, and we’ll help you get back home.”

Merrill turned and shooed Hawke and Varric away. “Go on, now, you’re frightening the child.”

“Sorry,” they both muttered sheepishly, and backed away.

“Come on out and let this nice man here take a look at you. He’s a healer,” Merrill smiled, lifting the baby elf by the armpits.

“Hello there,” Anders smiled, voice soft. “Are you hurt? May I take a look at you?”

The elf child stared at Anders and then up at Merrill, who now cradled the child with one arm under her butt and the other wrapped around her back. 

“It’s alright, he’s a nice man,” Merrill said reassuringly, rocking her.

Anders put his hands on the little girl’s back, and a soft blue glow lit them as he made sure she was not hurt or sick. Wrapped in Merrill’s arms, Anders’ warm hands gently pressed to her back, the healing magic washing over her, the little girl nuzzled against Merrill and fell asleep.

“Oh,” Merrill cooed. “Little angel, you’re safe now.”

“She’s just fine,” Anders whispered. “She could use some food and water, though.”

“Oh Hawke, what do we do?” Merrill said worriedly, turning to face him.

“We’ll have to try to find her parents, but they could be anywhere. She might be Dalish, she might be a Marcher or a Ferelden, we just don’t know. She’s probably too young to be able to tell us much, if she can even talk at all. We need to keep following these slavers, and with any luck we’ll find the information we need along the way.”

“We can’t drag her along for all that,” Merrill protested, rocking the child.

Anders ran the back of his finger along the girl’s cheek.

“Alright, one of us needs to take the child back to Kirkwall and look after it until we can finish this mission. We can’t all leave now and let the trail go cold. Who here has experience taking care of kids? I don’t,” Hawke said, looking among the three of them.

“Not me, either,” Varric said quickly, backing away with his hands in the air.

“Oh Creators, I don’t know anything about taking care of a child this young, either,” Merrill said in a panic.

“I’ve taken care of children before,” Anders said, “elves and humans, in my clinic and in the Circle tower as well. And no offense to any of you, but I might have the easiest time traveling solo back to Kirkwall.”

“Well, that settles that,” Hawke said with a relieved sigh. “Take the child back to your clinic, Anders, and when we get back hopefully we’ll have some information to help us find the child’s family.”

“If they yet live,” Anders said sadly. 

Merrill carefully transferred the little elfling to Anders’ arms. He cradled the baby girl and started singing to her softly when she woke up a little and fussed. She fell back asleep against his chest.

“Travel safely,” Hawke said, giving Anders a pat on the shoulder.

* * *

Hawke let himself into Fenris’s mansion and found him upstairs in the study, where he was crouched next to the fireplace, scooping ashes out into a trash bin. 

“Heh, actually cleaning?” Hawke asked with teasing incredulity. 

“I want a fire but it’s too full of ashes,” Fenris grumbled. 

Hawke helped himself to a seat and crossed an ankle over his knee.

“I was out with Varric, Merrill and Anders and we ran into Tevinter slavers,” he said carefully, watching Fenris to gauge his reaction. 

Fenris twitched but said nothing. He kept shoveling ashes and tried to look unaffected.

“We dispatched them and traced them back to a base of operations, which we also dealt with. They were out collecting; it wasn’t related to you or Danarius as far as we could tell.”

Fenris nodded.

“Funny thing happened though,” Hawke said, trying to lighten the mood. “We ended up finding a baby elf in one of the warehouses they were using for operations. The kid must have managed to get away when no one was looking. We found her hiding behind a barrel.”

Fenris put down his ash shovel and looked back at Hawke. “A baby?”

“Yeah, I’m not great at guessing the age of kids but I’d say maybe two years old.”

“Disgusting,” Fenris snarled. 

“She’s safe now, at least. She’s staying with Anders until we can--”

“What?” Fenris exclaimed, instantly on his feet.

“Huh?”

“You left the child with _Anders_ of all people?”

“Who else? He’s the only person I know who has any idea how to care for children,” Hawke shot back defensively. “Hey, where are you going?”

Hawke was answered only by the sound of Fenris’s angry footsteps storming down the stairs and then out of the mansion.

* * *

Fenris drew his sword and opened the clinic door. Anders was standing at the other side of the clinic with his back to the door. 

“What have you done with the child, mage?” Fenris shouted.

Anders turned around, revealing that a long sash tied around his waist and crossed across his chest had two little legs sticking out. There was some fluffy blonde hair sticking out near Anders’s heart, and a little pointy ear.

“Don’t shout, you’ll scare her,” Anders said, his voice soft but a look in his eyes that showed he was ferociously serious. 

An arm poked out of the sash, wagged in the air, and then a little balled up fist whacked Anders a few times. Anders smiled down at the elfling and cooed. 

“No, you don’t like loud, scary noises, do you Darling?” He wiggled a finger at her, which she caught up in her free hand and clenched. “Don’t you worry, mean old Fenris isn’t going to yell anymore, or else Anders is going to blast him into a million broody little pieces, isn’t he, little Darling? Yes, he is! Yes, he is!”

Fenris blinked. This was utterly not what he expected. Eventually he regained the wits to put away his sword.

“What are your intentions with that child?” Fenris said, still wary but much quieter and less threatening this time.

“Well, Merrill has been asking around in the alienage, but no one there knows of any missing children or families. She doesn’t feel comfortable going back to speak to the Dalish, so Hawke offered to go speak to them himself tomorrow. Even if she isn’t Dalish, if they’re willing to take her in, she might be better off with them than in the orphanage.”

Fenris stared at Anders. Anders looked genuinely sad as he talked about having to give her up and it confused him.

“I suppose you’d rather keep her for yourself and have a little slave all your own?” 

Anders’ eyes flashed vivid, unnatural blue, and his arms wrapped reflexively around the child strapped to his chest. 

“How dare you,” Anders snarled. He was about to say more, but just as he drew the breath to really lay into Fenris, the baby started crying.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Darling,” he said, instantly cooling. He rubbed one of his gracefully long fingers against her soft cheek and shushed her. “I promised I wouldn’t startle you anymore and here I am letting Fenris get me going again. He’s such a bully, isn’t he, Darling?”

Anders pointedly turned his back on Fenris and rocked the baby elf, singing to her softly.

“Then why are you doing this?” Fenris said, walking up behind Anders. 

“Why am I caring for an abandoned child we rescued from slavers? How can you even ask a question like that?” Anders demanded. “What sort of monster would just leave a child alone to die? We found her behind a _barrel,_ Fenris, she was all alone and hungry and thirsty.”

“And why not just take her to the orphanage right now?”

Anders looked away, focusing on the child instead of looking at Fenris. 

“I told you, I don’t want her to end up there.”

“Why not? Why do you care?”

“Is it really that hard to grasp?” Anders asked irritably. “It’s an awful place, and having her here with me is no burden until we find her a better place to go. She’s wonderful. I... I don’t really look forward to letting her go, truth be told. She’s just... she’s so sweet.”

Fenris scowled. He was confused by all of this. Anders was gazing at the little girl so tenderly; it made Fenris’s heart ache just looking at Anders and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand why a power-mad mage would waste his time caring for a child from whom he would gain no material benefit. He didn’t understand why a human would clutch an elf child so protectively and sing to her like he was her own father. 

The little girl stopped crying and started babbling instead. She wagged her little fist in the air again. Anders smiled at her and then sighed and looked back up at Fenris. 

“You don’t have to worry that I’ll hurt her,” he said. “I promise. I don’t mean her any harm at all. I’m going to take the best care of her I can until we find her a home.”

Fenris nodded reluctantly.

“Would you like to come see her?”

“What?”

Anders walked up to Fenris and turned so Fenris could get a look at the face peeking out from inside the cloth wrap. Fenris shied away from Anders’s nearness at first, but then his curiosity got the better of his skittishness and he leaned in closer to get a look at her. 

“Hello, baby,” he said awkwardly.

The little girl stared, big-eyed, at Fenris for several moments and then buried her face in Anders’s chest. Anders chuckled and patted her hair. 

“You do have a rather scary face,” he grinned.

“She seems... very comfortable with you,” Fenris mumbled.

“Not all mages are evil, Fenris,” Anders whispered. “We don’t all want to hurt people.”

Fenris studied Anders intensely. He knew Anders was one of the most powerful mages he’d ever met, and yet he was doing so much good. He did not exploit people, he cared for the sick and the wounded. He did not use the orphaned, he carried them in his arms and let them sleep listening to his heartbeat. He did not treat Fenris like a weapon to be wielded or a lyrium battery to be tapped, but like an equal.

He didn’t _get_ Anders. Anders defied everything Fenris had learned about mages while a slave in Tevinter.

“She’s lucky to have you,” Fenris murmured.

“What?”

Fenris looked away. 

“Do you want me to say it twice?” he said, managing to avoid a growl.  The little girl was watching him, and he resisted the urge to make a face at her.

“Actually, I’d love that,” Anders said, and it sounded honest enough that Fenris looked at him hard.

“I mean, really, you come in here, and you not only manage to avoid something bigoted and cruel, you say something kind.”

“I can take it back if you like,” Fenris snapped. The girl buried her face in Anders’s chest again, and Fenris scowled reflexively.  

“Please don’t,” Anders said tenderly.  

“Hmph.”

“Or you could make a sound like a constipated cat.  That works too.  Can’t he, Darling?  Doesn’t he sound like Mister Wiffles when he’s having a rough night, hmm?”

The girl giggled, smacking an open hand against Anders’s face, and Fenris thought that maybe, just maybe the mage got to live another day.

Anders grasped the girl’s tiny hand in his own large one and when the mage smiled, Fenris felt an unaccustomed blush rise on his face.

Well, perhaps he got to live one more day after that. 


End file.
